1894] The Due d' Orleans 133 



edge of the western world. The others with a slight veneer of Europe, 

 but hardly deeper than their clothes." This is the first mention in my 

 diary of Sheykh AH Yusuf, who played so important a part later in 

 Cairo's journalistic history. 



" 2jth Feb. — Princesse Helene and her brother the Due d'Orleans 

 spent the afternoon here. They have been up the river in a dahabiyah 

 to Wady Haifa, and enjoyed themselves immensely. He is a good 

 young fellow, manly and intelligent, and extremely nice to her. He 

 tells me that in Somaliland he has seen as many as 500 ostriches to- 

 gether. They go in packs in the autumn and winter months, males and 

 females separately, but pair in the early spring. The buffaloes even 

 there are almost extinct. It was nearly dark when they left, and I rode 

 back with them as far as the obelisk. 



" 28th Feb. — Heavy rain, enough to make the spouts on the roof 

 run, the first time they have done so since the house was finished more 

 than two years ago. There is a great deal of nonsense talked about 

 the increase of rain in Egypt since the Suez Canal was made — and of 

 fogs since the British occupation. It is pure rubbish. Reading old 

 accounts of travellers two and three hundred years ago, I see that they 

 generally remark that there is but little rain in Egypt, never that there 

 is none, and so it is now. All the change there has been is a certain 

 increase of morning fogs and dampness through the increased irriga- 

 tion of the Delta, but I am a sceptic about the increase of rain. Old 

 West, our Consul at Suez, told me ten years ago that in his experience 

 there of forty years he had remarked no change." I tested this once 

 later by questioning my chief Bedouin, Suliman, whose home is the 

 desert between Cairo and Suez, on this head. " Do you not find, Suli- 

 man," I said, " a great change in the climate here in your recollection? " 

 " Oh, yes," he answered, " there is a great one, and sadly for the worse. 

 When I was a boy, we had beautiful rains on the upper country with 

 eshub (green spring herbage) every year for our camels, now not a 

 single drop, all is burnt up, a sad change certainly." 



" 4th March. — Gladstone has really retired from public life. He 

 went to Windsor yesterday, so the telegrams say, and gave in his resig- 

 nation, recommending Rosebery as his successor. I suppose now he is 

 gone there will be a general chorus of praise, but for my part I shall 

 not join it. He has betrayed too many good causes not to be an evil 

 doer in my eyes, and his one remaining cause, Ireland, he leaves in the 

 lurch to-day by his retirement. I am glad to see that Labouchere and 

 twenty more members of Parliament have protested against Rosebery's 

 succession. 



" 6th March. — It is announced in the ' Bosphore ' and other local 

 papers that the Sultan has telegraphed his entire approval of the 

 Khedive's action in the late crisis, and has instructed his Ambassador in 



